Inquiring Minds

Questions About Physics

Speculations on getting an Instant Cold Drink

You wrote:
I remember a few years ago reading about a new idea of making it possible for that when you open a can of pop that it will instantly turn
cold. For some reason I remember them as saying that it will be out in a few years. I was wondering if you knew how they could do this and
as to if it is true and if so, when it will come out

- tim

Tim,

How to create an instant cold drink an interesting question. There are probably engineers in the beverage industry working on such schemes. I do not know where to suggest finding information, but I am happy to speculate about how one might do it. I can imagine that
one could have two compartments in a drink container, one with a pressurized refrigerant (like carbon dioxide or an environmentally friendly variant of freon) and one with the drink. When the drink is opened, depressurizing the refrigerant and allowing it to rapidly evaporate and vent to atmosphere could provide a cooling effect. There are certainly disadvantages to such a scheme, such as the space that the refrigerant takes up and making sure that the refrigerant is safely vented and not consumed. So maybe there there are other, better options. Perhaps information would be hard to find, since such tricks might be corporate secrets until they appear on the shelf. But I would not be surprised to find such a product some day.